Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

The next day after breakfast, they met up in some deserted barn close to the motel.

"What are we evening doing here?", Mercedes asked and rubbed her temples. She had those weird blurry dreams about that woman again. But this time, she had been fighting. Once all that was over, she should probably consult her therapist again.

"If we want that alliance to work, we need to know each other's abilities and weaknesses", Santana explained.

"Okay." Mercedes slumped down on the ground and crossed her legs. "I will pass. I don't even have powers anyway."

Santana decided not to comment on that. She had been living long enough among humans to be able to read their auras, but hers was different from them. Whatever, she would look into that matter another time.

"What is it even what you can do?", Sam asked her. "What kind of witch are you?"

"A pretty old-school witch", the Latina answered with a shrug. "With my ring, I can only control the elements fire, water, earth, and air. With certain items, I can do more than that. Without my ring, I'm screwed."

"So if I stole that ring, you would be powerless?", Rachel queried.

"Yup. That's why I need to make sure no one takes it away from me, Never." She nodded to Kurt who was busy reading something on his phone. "Lady Lips, you go first."

"What?" Kurt absentmindedly looked up from his phone. "Sorry, what did you just say?"

The Latina threw him a killing glance. "Have you even been listening to us in the past ten minutes?"

"I haven't, sorry. My dad just sent me a text becau-"

"I give zero fucks about your dad, capish?" Santana groaned angrily. "Come on, attack me. Now."

Kurt just crossed his arms. "No."

"And why not?"

"I'm a pacifist. I never hurt people with my powers."

With every word he said, Santana's eyes narrowed more and more. "What do you think are those Brainwarp psychos going to do to us if you tell them so? Spare you? Go eat some ice cream with you? Give you the Nobel Peace Prize? Highly doubt that. Nobody said you need to turn into an assassin – which would be fine with me – but we all are going to dirty our hands at some point."

"Do you really want to go as low as our enemies?", Kurt countered.

"Yes!"

"Alright", he answered with a frown. "You want me to hurt you?" The walls of barn started vibrating suspiciously. "Fine."

Sam and Mercedes exchanged worried glances, Rachel looked at Santana with her arms crossed. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"If I was you, I would leave now", Kurt commented. "The barn will collapse any moment because I just removed every single nail from the timber beams."

As if on cue, all the nails came floating over to him and fell to his feet. "And as you all know, nails are of metal, and I have electromagnetic powers."

"Dude, we should get the-" Sam couldn't end his sentence because all the timber beams came tumbling down to them at once – well, at least they were before he lifted his hand and froze time.

"Now get out of here before the time is up!", Sam ordered.

They did – and just when the last one had left the barn, the clock started ticking again and the entire barn collapsed.

Beyond pissed, Kurt turned to Santana again. "Are you happy now? We almost died in there!"

"Almost, that's the point", the Latina corrected him calmly. "That's what we have Trout Mouth for."

"I just told you that I didn't want to use my powers that way!", he snapped with balled fists. "There needs to be another way to defeat those people."

"How?" Santana was yelling now. "How, for fuck's sake? We need to fight fire with fire, don't you see? Those are aliens, they have no mercy. They will kill us the moment the see us, what about that is it what you don't understand?!"

"Everything", he answered simply. "Literally everything." He turned on his heel and stormed off, pissed.

"Kurt!", Mercedes called after him. She wanted to follow him, but Santana shook her head and held her back.

"Let him leave. He will come to his senses eventually." She looked in the round expectantly. "And now what?"

"If those aliens want to kill us, we need to be able to defend ourselves", Rachel reasoned. "Okay, who among us knows martial arts?"

When everyone stayed silent, Santana shook her head disdainfully. "Truly pathetic."

"I know the best way for us to learn the fine art of self-defense." Mercedes retrieved her phone from her jeans' pocket and typed something in. "Aunt YouTube is the best teacher, isn't she?", she explained with a wink when she showed them her phone with a video she had found online.

Sam looked hooked while Santana just shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, why not? Back when I was born, people didn't even know what a phone was. Or a car."

"Okay, we get it, Santana", Rachel cut her off, already annoyed "You are older than us. Can we start now?"

The witch gave her the finger at that.

…

According to the nice reception lady of their motel, there was a small bar close to their motel. Kurt didn't take long to find it. Even though it was not even four pm now and way too early to have a drink, he needed one to calm down. Besides, his head was hurting a bit.

The bar was not that crowded, which was no surprise at all because that hicktown was in the middle of nowhere. Kurt took a seat at the bar and pensively looked down his phone. It died on the way and he still hadn't read the text his dad had sent him. Whether it was because the software of his chip needed another update? Whether the nanobots in his body had a malfunction and he didn't even know? Until now, he still felt good - apart from that headache.

The nice lady served him his Gin Tonic and Kurt nodded gratefully. He had never been a fan of violence, especially because of what happened seven years ago, but maybe, Santana was right. Maybe, violence was the only way to defeat those aliens.

"Not that much of a beer drinker, right?", another voice next to him suddenly pulled him out of his thoughts.

Kurt startled and looked to the side. Another guy with bushy eyebrows and dark hair was sitting next to him now.

"Not really", he shrugged.

"That's a shame", dark haired guy answered. "The beer here tastes great. You would miss out on the unique Pennsylvanian experience."

He looked down his glass with a sigh. "Look, you are cute and everything…But I'm not in the mood for socializing. Can you please…go away and bother someone else?"

"Did you just say I'm cute?"

Dammit. He didn't even know whether that guy was gay. Kurt felt how he blushed. Could this day get any worse? "I…" He honestly didn't know what to say.

"I guess I need to take that as a compliment", the guy answered with a smile. "I'm Blaine, by the way. And the answer is no. No, I won't go away and bother anyone else because I already made it my mission to bother you."

"I feel flattered", Kurt joked. "How could you even tell I'm not from here?"

"Because I would memorize someone like you."

Was he …flirting? Kurt couldn't tell, the last time he had been flirting was when he and Diego were still a thing, which was a long, long time ago. And much to his annoyance, Kurt liked it. But seriously, this wasn't the time and the place. After all, a group of very dangerous aliens were after them and sought their lives.

"Well…thanks." He had no idea what else to say. How pathetic. "You're a local, right?"

"Not really", Blaine confessed, rubbing his neck "I'm from Westerville. That's-"

"-in Ohio", Kurt ended his sentence, his eyes widened in surprise. "No way. I'm from Lima."

"Wow, that's what I call coincidence. How come we never crossed ways before?"

"I have absolutely no idea. I was pretty well-known since I was the only gay boy in town. Or at least the only one that was out of the closet."

"So was I, but people stopped giving me a hard time when I transferred to that sheltered prep school for boys, it's called Dalton. Or was, at least. It burned down not long ago and wasn't rebuilt ever since."

"Gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that."

Blaine sighed sadly. "Yes, so am I. Dalton was my safe haven when I needed it the most."

"That's what I needed back in highschool", Kurt sighed. "But on the other hand, I also didn't want to let the bullies win. I wanted them to know that they would never bring me down, that's why I decided not to change schools."

"I wish I didn't run away. Maybe, things could have been different."

But Kurt shook his head. "I don't agree with you. Yes, maybe, things would have been different, but in a bad way. You could have gotten hurt or taken decisions you're not proud of in hindsight." He just couldn't help but think about what happened to Karofsky because he couldn't control himself back in highschool. Gosh, how he hated those memories.

A short glance to his smartwatch made him flinch. "I need to go, but I really enjoyed chatting with you." He put a couple of bills on the counter and got up.

Before he left, Blaine called after him: "Can you at least tell me your name?"

Instead of doing so, Kurt answered with a smile: "If we ever meet again, I will."

…

"What are we going to do now, Soraya?", Omari asked her desperately. "Cleopatra's people are already close on our heels. How the hell do we get out of here now?"

The steps were indeed getting closer and closer. Soon, they were going to find their hideout. Soraya nervously rubbed her hands. She swore to herself to never use her powers whenever there was another peaceful way. But Cleopatra wanted her dead, just because she and her people questioned her regency. She and Omari were the leaders of the resistance, the ones that wanted to dethrone the Egyptian rulers.

It made sense that Cleopatra sought their lives. Soraya shook her head. She couldn't allow that they just killed them. Yes, she had nothing to lose, but Omari had two children and a loving wife. She couldn't allow that his sons grew up without a father.

"Omari, close your eyes and keep your head down", she ordered when she started lifting her hands.

Her best friend threw her a questioning glance. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Just trust me, please!", she pleaded. The young man did as she said. Just at that moment, the doors of the shack burst open, and a dozen armed men came rushing in. Soraya lifted her hands the room was suddenly filled with bright light.

…

"You still with us, Aretha?" Santana snapped her fingers in front of her face, and Mercedes blinked repeatedly.

"W-what the…?"

"You spaced out for the past twenty minutes", Sam explained and furrowed his eyebrows. "You didn't react when we tried talking to you. It was kind of creepy."

Mercedes rubbed her temples. "I had one of those weird dreams again, but I've never been daydreaming until now."

"And what were those dreams about?", Rachel asked her curiously.

"I dunno… My memories about them are so blurry…but I saw them through the eyes of a woman called…Soraya?" It was the first time she could remember a name of the people appearing in her dreams. She scratched her head, trying to remember the rest of her daydream. "It took place in ancient Egypt for some reason, when Cleopatra was still alive."

"Soraya, you said?" Sam retrieved his phone and typed in that name in the Browser.

Rachel cocked her eyebrows at that. "Sam, do you really think we will find some random name of a-"

"Got it! Good old Wikipedia never lets you down." He triumphantly pumped his fist in the air. "Soraya, born around 71 BC, date of death unknown. Tried to dispossess Cleopatra but failed. Then, she just disappeared." He frowned at the display weirdly.

"And what else does it say?", Mercedes asked him when he had stopped reading.

"Apparently, Soraya was the Egyptian goddess of the stars. She refused to use her powers because she never wanted to hurt anyone."

"Ookay…" Rachel looked in the round confusedly. "And why does Mercedes keep dreaming of some Egyptian goddess?"

"Because Soraya was my ancestor." That had to be the only reasonable answer. She felt weirdly connected to Soraya, and the only reason could be that Soraya's blood was flowing through her veins. That's why those dreams felt like memories, right?

Santana cocked her head to the side quizzically. "And what does that make you? Some kind of divine offspring?", she joked.

But Mercedes just nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess so." Was that what her dreams were trying to tell her all the time? "Guys, I think I'm a demigoddess."

Happy New Year To you, fellas =D